more on FreeBSD and Brother HL-5250-DN

Not to bore anyone, but my finding may be of interest.
Predrag pointed me at a Brother lpr/printcap setup for Linux--
will wonders never cease?, :-). The URL is
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html
and had configurations (binaries, not plaintext) for Redhat
andDebian. I managed to install, and thus unpack, the *deb
(is that cpio?) on my Ubuntu desktop.
Very late last night it occurred to me that the reason no
/dev/lpt0 was that my parallel cable isn't plugged into my new
printer. The test pages work via the cat5 <-> switch; this
HTML helped me configure the 5250. When I another geek over
here to plug things together, I'll be able to test the
/etc/printcap. Here it is, as auto-installed by dpkg -i::
HL5250DN:\
:mx=0:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/HL5250DN:\
:sh:\
:lp=/dev/usb/lp0:\
:if=/usr/local/Brother/lpd/filterHL5250DN:
Most of this will port to FreeBSD easily. The Brother directory
is full of two subdirs each with a number of files. The input
filter, "filterHL5250DN" and other /bin/sh scripts in lpd/
will take some porting. Soooooooo: is printcap the best way to
go? What about IPP? The nutshell is that I'd like to use the
printer in the way that takes the least messing-with. I have
two "desktop", BSD and Ubuntu. I would like to make the FreeBSD
computer my printserver ... if I can't use the 5250 as a
networked printer.
Advice please!!
gary
--
Gary Kline kline at thought.org www.thought.org Public Service Unix
http://jottings.thought.orghttp://transfinite.thought.org